What were records made of before vinyl? History of vinyl records. Souvenir and decorative plates

Many will agree that the vinyl record is, without exaggeration, a symbol of the 20th century. Several generations of people grew up on them. And although this information carrier was supplanted over time by cassettes and CDs, it still has its connoisseurs and admirers all over the world. Why does this seemingly bygone thing still attract people?

It is logical that the history of not only vinyl, but also other gramophone records is inextricably linked with the development of equipment that could reproduce them. In 1877, the young scientist Thomas Edison patented his invention - the phonograph - a device that allows you to record and reproduce sound. The recording was made using a needle, which left a mark on a cylindrical roller wrapped in tin foil or wax tape. At that time it was truly a fantastic invention. In the same year, the French poet and inventor Charles Cros scientifically substantiated and explained the principle of recording sound on a drum and its subsequent playback. 10 years later, based on these discoveries, the American inventor Emil Berliner proposed a new method for recording and reproducing sounds and patented a recorder and gramophone. It was Berliner who proposed giving the sound information carrier the shape of a round disk.

While many users have already thrown their records into the trash and their turntables have been shoved into the closet, those are still alive and growing. Although the number of stores selling gramophone records has noticeably decreased even here in Russia (while CDs can be found in almost every shop selling industrial goods), the world's leading companies continue to produce and improve vinyl disc players - gramophone records.

To obtain records with stereophonic information, two channels of it are recorded on two sides of a V-shaped groove. The highest chic is considered to be direct recording at the beginning of the creation of the original, without the use of auxiliary studio tape recorders. Alas, such records are very rare.

To play records, a double pickup with one needle is used - the components of its vibrations from the two inclined walls of the groove are mechanically transmitted to two systems for converting mechanical vibrations into electrical ones. The needle has a U-shaped end with a small radius of curvature and is located inside the V-shaped groove of the record without touching its bottom. Therefore, only changes in the groove profile are transmitted to the needle. The needle is made of a hard, low-wear material - usually corundum or diamond. In more or less high-quality players, only diamond needles are used with a service life of up to 500-1000 hours.

The reasons for the long life of gramophone records are not only that many music lovers and simply music lovers have accumulated entire collections of these products, many find that the sound of the record being played is softer, more natural and warmer than that of digital systems. And one cannot but agree with this. Even the inherent noise of records has become so commonplace that designers of CD players are forced to create a faint noise during pauses.

A gramophone record (usually just a record) is an analogue carrier of sound information - a disk, on one or both sides of which a continuous spiral groove (track) is applied by one method or another, the shape of which is modulated by a sound wave.
To “play” (reproduce sound) gramophone records, devices specially designed for this purpose are used: gramophones, gramophones, and later on – electric players and electrophones.
When moving along a record track, the player's needle begins to vibrate (since the shape of the track is uneven in the plane of the record along its radius and perpendicular to the direction of movement of the needle, and depends on the recorded signal). When vibrated, the piezoelectric material or electromagnetic coil of the pickup produces an electrical signal, which is amplified by the amplifier and then played back by the speaker(s), reproducing the sound recorded in the recording studio.
The words "record" and "record" are shorthand for "gramophone record" and "gramophone record", although gramophones themselves have not been widely used for a long time. At the end of the 19th and throughout the 20th centuries, the gramophone record was (until it was replaced by the compact disc in the mid-1990s) the most popular means of distributing audio recordings, inexpensive and accessible.
The main advantage of the gramophone record was the convenience of mass replication by hot pressing; in addition, gramophone records are not subject to the action of electric and magnetic fields. The disadvantages of a gramophone record are susceptibility to temperature changes and humidity, mechanical damage (scratches), as well as inevitable wear and tear with constant use (decrease and loss of audio characteristics). In addition, phonograph records provide less dynamic range than more modern recording storage formats.
Hard plates Various sizes of gramophone records: 30 cm (45 rpm), 25 cm (78 rpm) and 17.5 cm (45 rpm). The central “apple” of the latter can be broken off to obtain a hole with a diameter of 38.24 mm for automatic record players. The term “hard” itself in relation to gramophone records is rarely used, because usually gramophone records, unless specified, mean just that. Early gramophone records are most often called “shellac” (based on the material they are made of), or “gramophone” (based on the common device for playing them). Shellac plates are thick (up to 3 mm), heavy (up to 220 g) and fragile. Before playing such records on relatively modern electrophones, you need to make sure that their tonearm is equipped with a replaceable head or a rotary stylus marked “78”, and that the player’s disk can rotate at the appropriate speed. Gramophone records are not necessarily made of shellac - as technology developed, they began to be made of synthetic resins and plastics. In the USSR in 1950, 78 rpm records made of polyvinyl chloride appeared; they were marked “PVC” and “Shellac-free”. The last “breakable” shellac record was released at the Aprelevsky plant in 1971.
But usually vinyl records mean later ones, designed for playback on electric players, not mechanical gramophones, and at a rotation speed of no higher than 45 rpm.
Flexible plates There are rare supplement records that were included in computer magazines in the late 1970s and on which computer programs were recorded (later, before the widespread distribution of floppy disks, compact cassettes were used for these purposes). This standard of records was called Floppy-ROM; such a flexible record could hold up to 4 KB of data at a rotation speed of 33⅓ rpm. Flexible records are also recorded on old x-rays.
Flexible postcard plates were also previously produced. Such souvenirs were sent by mail and contained, in addition to notes, handwritten congratulations. They came in two different types:
Consisting of a flexible rectangular or round plate with one-sided recording, attached to a printing base card with a hole in the center. Like flexible records, they had a limited operating frequency range and playing time;
The tracks of the record were printed on a varnish layer covering a photograph or postcard. The sound quality was even lower than on flexible gramophone records (and postcards based on them); such records could not be stored for a long time due to warping and drying out of the varnish. But such records could be recorded by the sender himself: there were recorders, one of which can be seen in action in the film “Carnival Night.”
Souvenir and decorative plates“Sound souvenir” - a photo card with a recording. They were made in the presence of the customer in small semi-makeshift recording studios in resort towns of the USSR. The usual color of gramophone records is black, but multi-colored ones are also available. There are also gramophone records where, under a transparent layer with tracks, there is a paint layer that repeats the design of the envelope or replaces the information on it (as a rule, these are expensive collector's editions). Decorative plates can be square, hexagonal, in the form of a circular saw blade, in the shape of animals, birds, etc.
Handicraft records. "Music on the ribs" Recording on X-ray film
In the 1950s and 1960s in the USSR, underground recording studios recorded musical works, which for ideological reasons were prohibited from being distributed by the Melodiya company, on large-format X-ray films. This is where the expression “Jazz on the bones” came from (also, such “homemade” recordings were commonly called “ribs” or “records on ribs”). In those years, recordings of many Western singers and musical groups (for example, The Beatles) could only be heard on such underground records. Due to the drying of the film emulsion, such plates curled over time and were generally short-lived.
This original method of sound recording is reflected in art, for example, in Viktor Tsoi’s song “Once You Were a Beatnik” there are the words: “You were ready to give your soul for rock and roll, extracted from a photograph of someone else’s diaphragm.” Also in the song “My Old Blues” by the leader of the Moscow acoustic group “Bedlam” (late 1990s - 2002) Viktor Klyuev there are the words: “The record ‘on the bones’ is still intact, but you can’t understand individual phrases anymore.” The process of recording “on the bones” itself was demonstrated in the 2008 film “Hipsters” (original title: “Boogie on the Bones”). As soon as affordable tape recorders became available for sale, homemade recording virtually disappeared.
Recording formats
Monophonic records Historically, records with monophonic recording (one sound channel) were the first to appear. The vast majority of these records had a transverse, or Berliner, recording, in which the pickup needle oscillates left and right. However, at the dawn of the recording era, records were also released with deep (“Edison”) recording, where the needle moved up and down. Some gramophones had the ability to rotate the head with a membrane by 90°, which allowed them to play both types of records. The first mass-produced monophonic records had a rotation speed of 78 rpm, then records appeared at speeds of 45 and 33⅓ rpm (for music) and 16⅔ and 8½ rpm (for speech). Monophonic records produced in the USSR were marked with a triangle or square sign. On early records and turntables, the rotation speed was written inside a geometric figure. Sometimes only the rotation speed was indicated, without markings.
Stereo records In monophonic records, the profiles of the left and right walls of the V-shaped sound track do not differ, but in stereophonic records (two sound channels, for the right and left ears), the right wall of the track is modulated by the signal of the first channel, and the left wall by the signal of the second channel. The stereophonic pickup head has two sensitive elements (piezocrystals or electromagnetic coils), located at an angle of 45° to the surface of the record (and at 90° to each other) and connected to the stylus by so-called pushers. Mechanical vibrations that the stylus perceives from the left or right wall of the audio track excite an electrical signal in the corresponding sound channel of the player. This scheme was theoretically substantiated by the English engineer Alan Blumlein back in 1931, but it received practical implementation only in 1958. It was then that the first modern stereo records were first demonstrated at the London Recording Equipment Exhibition.
Stereo players can also play monophonic recordings, in which case they perceive them as two identical channels.
In early experiments in recording a stereo signal onto one track, they tried to combine more traditional transverse and depth recording: one channel was formed based on horizontal vibrations of the stylus, and the other based on vertical vibrations. But with this recording format, the quality of one channel was significantly inferior to the quality of the other, and it was quickly abandoned.
Most stereo records are recorded at 33⅓ rpm with a track width of 55 µm. Previously (especially in a number of countries outside the USSR), records with a rotation speed of 45 rpm were widely produced. In the USA, their compact versions were especially popular, intended for use in jukeboxes with automatic change or selection of records. They were also suitable for playback on home players. To record speech programs, records were produced with a rotation speed of 8⅓ rpm and a playing time of up to one and a half hours on one side. Stereo records are available in three diameters: 175, 250 and 300 mm, which provides an average duration of sound on one side (at 33⅓ rpm) of 7-8, 13-15 and 20-24 minutes. The duration of the sound depends on the cutting density. A tightly cut record can hold up to 30 minutes of music on one side, but the stylus on such records can jump and be generally unstable. Also, records with compacted recording wear out faster due to narrower groove walls.
Quadrophonic records Quadraphonic records contain information about four (two front and two rear) audio channels, which allows you to convey the volume of a musical work. This format gained some, rather limited, distribution in the 1970s. The number of albums released in this format was very small (for example, a quad version of the famous 1973 album by the rock group Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” was released), and their circulation was limited - this was due to the need to use rare and expensive special players and amplifiers for 4 channels. By the 1980s, this direction was curtailed. In the USSR, the first and only experiment in mastering four-channel sound took place in 1980, when an album by the group “Yabloko” was recorded and released under the name “Country-folk-rock group “Yabloko”” (KA90-14435-6). The record cost more than a regular one - 6 rubles (a giant stereo record with pop music then cost 2 rubles 15 kopecks, released under a foreign license - slightly more expensive), and the total circulation was 18,000 copies.
Manufacturing Using special equipment, sound is converted into mechanical vibrations of a cutter (usually sapphire), which cuts concentric sound tracks onto a layer of material. At the dawn of recording, tracks were cut on wax, later on phonographic foil coated with nitrocellulose, and later phonographic foil was replaced by copper foil. In the late 70s, Teldec developed DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) technology, according to which tracks are formed on a thin layer of amorphous copper covering a perfectly flat steel substrate. This made it possible to significantly increase the accuracy of reproduction of the recorded signal, which led to a noticeable improvement in the sound quality of phonographic recordings. This technology is still used today. From the disk obtained in this way, using galvanoplasty, the required number of nickel copies with both positive and negative display of the mechanical phonogram is obtained in several successive stages. The negative copies made at the last stage, which serve as the basis in the process of pressing vinyl records, are called matrices; All intermediate nickel copies are usually called originals.
The production of originals and matrices is carried out in the galvanic workshop. Electrochemical processes are carried out in multi-chamber galvanic installations with automatic stepwise regulation of electric current and nickel build-up time.
Mold parts are manufactured on CNC machines and undergo high-temperature soldering in vacuum ovens using special technology. The molds themselves ensure high uniformity of the temperature field on the forming surfaces, low inertia of the temperature regime, and therefore high productivity. A single mold can produce tens of thousands of records. The material for making a modern gramophone record is a special mixture based on a copolymer of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate (polyvinyl chloride) with various additives necessary to give the plastic the necessary mechanical and temperature properties. High quality mixing of powdery components is achieved using two-stage mixers with hot and cold mixing.
In the press shop, a heated portion of vinyl with labels already glued on top and bottom is fed into the press, which, under pressure of up to 100 atm, spreads between the two halves of the mold and, after cooling, forms a finished gramophone record. Next, the disc edges are trimmed, inspected, and packaged. The first gramophone record produced after installing nickel dies on the press, and then each specially selected one from the circulation, are carefully checked for dimensional characteristics and listened to in specially equipped sound booths. To avoid warping, all pressed records undergo the required temperature exposure, and before packing in an envelope, the appearance of each record is checked additionally.
Playback Playing vinyl records has a number of features related both to the physical nature of this medium and to the technical features of vinyl sound reproduction and its amplification. For example, a mandatory element for electrophones with a magnetic pickup head is a phono stage.
Story The most primitive prototype of a gramophone record can be considered a music box, in which a metal disk with a deep spiral groove is used to pre-record a melody. In certain places of the groove, pinpoint depressions are made - pits, the location of which corresponds to the melody. When the disk rotates, driven by a clock spring mechanism, a special metal needle slides along the groove and “reads” the sequence of applied dots. The needle is attached to a membrane, which makes a sound every time the needle hits a groove.
The oldest gramophone record in the world is now considered to be a sound recording that was made in 1860. Researchers from the recording history group First Sounds discovered it on March 1, 2008, in a Paris archive and were able to play an audio recording of a folk song made by French inventor Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville using a device he called a “phonautograph” in 1860. It is 10 seconds long and is an excerpt from a French folk song. The phonautograph scratched sound tracks on a piece of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp.
In 1877, the French scientist Charles Cros was the first to scientifically substantiate the principles of recording sound on a drum (or disk) and its subsequent playback. In the same year, namely in the middle of 1877, the young American inventor Thomas Edison invented and patented a phonograph device in which sound is recorded on a cylindrical roller wrapped in tin foil (or paper tape coated with a layer of wax) using a needle (cutter) , associated with the membrane; the needle draws a helical groove of variable depth on the surface of the foil. His wax roller phonograph was not widely used due to the difficulty of copying the recording, the rapid wear of the rollers, and poor playback quality.
In 1887, the Jewish-American engineer Emil Berliner proposed using a disk-shaped medium for recording. While working on his idea, Berliner first built and tested Charles Cros' device, proposed 20 years earlier, using a zinc plate instead of a chrome plate. Emil Berliner replaced the rollers with disks - metal matrices from which copies could be made. With their help, gramophone records were pressed. One matrix made it possible to print an entire circulation - at least 500 records, which significantly reduced production costs and, accordingly, the cost of production. This was the main advantage of Emil Berliner's gramophone records compared to Edison's wax rollers, which could not be mass-produced. Unlike Edison's phonograph, Berliner developed a special device to record sound - a recorder, and to reproduce sound he created another - a gramophone, for which a patent was received on September 26, 1887. Instead of Edison's depth recording, Berliner used transverse recording, in which the needle left a sinuous trace of constant depth. In the 20th century, the membrane was replaced by microphones that convert sound vibrations into electrical vibrations, and by electronic amplifiers.
In 1892, a method was developed for galvanic replication of a zinc disk from a positive, as well as a technology for pressing ebonite records using a steel printing matrix. But ebonite was quite expensive and was soon replaced by a composite mass based on shellac, a wax-like substance produced by tropical insects from the family of lac bugs that live in southeast Asia. The plates became of better quality and cheaper, and therefore more accessible, but their main drawback was their low mechanical strength - they resembled glass in their fragility. Shellac records were produced until the middle of the 20th century, until they were supplanted by even cheaper ones - made from polyvinyl chloride (“vinyl”). One of the first real gramophone records was a record released in 1897 by Victor in the USA.

Many beautiful and different records...

Vinyl records can differ according to various criteria: in color, in their shape (there are figured vinyl, as well as discs of geometric shapes), in format and size...

About inches

You all probably know that there are disk formats such as 7″ (inches), 10″ (inches) and 12″ (inches).

So 10″-inch records are a kind of “dinosaur” of the vinyl era. As a rule, all 78-rpm gramophone records are classified as such. Such discs contained only 2-3 minutes of sound on each side, and nothing more.

This format was followed by 7″ and 12″ inch vinyl. Each of these options was developed by a specific record company pursuing its own specific goals.

For example, the mission of 7″ inches was to maintain the best sound quality with the smallest vinyl sizes. Therefore, such records, created at 45 rpm, contained the same number of compositions as their 78-rpm 10″ inch counterparts.

So it happened that 7″ inch discs became singles with 3-minute compositions on each side of the vinyl. This has become a generally accepted global standard.

7″-inch discs have become the standard of quality and simply normal in the recording industry. But there is always an exception to even the most solid rule, right? And such an exception was the Melodiya company...

She was somehow able to produce 7" 33 rpm vinyls with 2 tracks on each side. It would be better to simply remain silent about the sound quality of such publications. True, this was a long time ago and few people remember about it. But a fact is a fact.

It is curious that since those epoch-making times of vinyl format battles, seven-inch discs have also been produced with a larger hole in the center. This type of record was used in jukeboxes (jukeboxes). For such vinyl, a round adapter was used, which, as a rule, the manufacturer of the imported “turntable” included free of charge along with the player.

Today, seven-inch records are produced with a hole of a regular, standardized diameter, or the vinyl has a special insert that can be easily pulled out and thereby create a larger hole in the disc.

As for 12″-inch vinyl discs, they began to be produced due to the need to publish releases with a total playing time of 40 minutes on both sides (based on 20 minutes for each side). Thus, the main competitor of magnetic tape was born.

Later, 12″ inch singles with 2-3 tracks began to be published at both 45 and 33 rpm. By and large, these were the same 7″ inch vinyl discs, but with a higher quality sound. The reason for the increase in sound level was the size of the disc. It made it possible to make recording grooves as wide as possible and with a longer sound duration.

Color and shape

The most common, classic shade of most vinyl records is black.

In fact, the color can be any. Absolutely. But experts believe that the choice of color can affect the sound quality, wear resistance of vinyl and its durability. By the way, we once talked about this in one of our September articles. There this issue is examined in detail and thoroughly.

In addition, there are also picture discs in nature, which are sometimes a true masterpiece of design thought and its artistic embodiment.

It turns out that at the stage of formation and the beginning of the development of the “vinyl culture” of listening to music, it was planned to introduce color coding of records by genre and direction. But this was soon forgotten. It's a pity. This would certainly be of interest to collectors and audiophiles.

And now a few words about the shape of vinyl... Yes, in fact, there are not many vinyl records of truly unusual shape in the world. This makes them even more valuable and attractive for investment. On this occasion, Colors magazine and Tashen publishing house not long ago created a unique work - a book about the most bizarre, crazy and simply masterpiece in design and design of vinyl discs from all over the world. It's called Extraordinary Records.

Revolutions

Recording at 45 rpm definitely improves sound quality by optimizing the noise-to-signal ratio (specifically, in the high-frequency spectrum).

But at the same time, the format reduces the amount of recording time on each side. It is for this reason that only singles and less often EPs are released at 45 rpm.

33 revolutions result in a longer recording. But the sound quality is reduced in quality, unfortunately. But not much. A newbie vinyl lover, for example, will definitely not understand the difference. But a more experienced audiophile will hear it right away. In addition, he knows that due to the narrow grooves of such a record, vinyl is more susceptible to deformation than discs of other formats.

At the moment, 33-rpm vinyl is usually used for publishing “heavy” albums, because you can’t fit all the music on a medium of a different format.

Wise publishers, in order to avoid reducing the sound quality on 33 rpm vinyl, do the following: they print the album of the group/performer not on 1 record, but on several (2 or 3). This is done in situations, for example, when the release is of great significance and at the same time very long duration, as well as a huge number of tracks. Thanks to this, it is possible to maintain decent sound quality and fit all the necessary tracks in one publication.

EPs and singles

Singles are most often released with various variations of compositions and remixes. However, they do not always have a unique cover. But an EP is more of a mini-album, often containing stand-alone compositions and always having its own cover.

Recording time

Regarding the number of minutes recorded on each side of vinyl, we can say this: it depends on the duration of the track, on the frequency range, on the volume of the track, on the recording speed (33 or 45), as well as on the presence of different stereo effects and their technical complexity.

The wider the grooves of the record and the faster its recording speed, the louder the sound will seem, and the disc will be more resistant to various external influences (vibrations, for example).

That's all for today.

Types of records

There are rare supplementary discs that were included in computer magazines in the late 70s and on which computer programs were recorded (later, before the mass distribution of floppy disks, compact cassettes were used for these purposes). This standard of records was called Floppy-ROM and such a flexible record could hold up to 4 kB of data at a rotation speed of 33.3 rpm.

Flexible records are also recorded on old x-rays (see below).

Flexible postcard records were also previously produced. Such souvenirs were sent by mail and contained, in addition to notes, handwritten congratulations. They came in two different types:

• Consisting of a flexible rectangular or round plate with one-sided recording, attached to a printing base card with a hole in the center. Like flexible records, they had a limited operating frequency range and playing time;
• The tracks of the record were printed on a varnish layer covering a photograph or postcard. The sound quality was even lower than on flexible gramophone records (and postcards based on them), and such records could not be stored for a long time due to warping and drying out of the varnish. But such records could have been recorded by the sender himself: there were recorders, one of which can be seen in action in the film “Carnival Night”.

The color of gramophone records is mainly black, although multi-colored ones are often produced for children and DJs. There are also gramophone records where, under a transparent layer with tracks, there is a paint layer that repeats the design of the envelope or replaces the information on it (as a rule, these are expensive collector's editions). Decorative plates can be square, hexagonal, in the form of a circular saw blade, as well as in the shape of animals and birds.

Formats

Various record formats: 30 cm at 45 rpm, 25 cm at 78 rpm and 17.5 cm at 45 rpm (the central apple of the latter can be broken off to create a 24 mm diameter hole for automatic record players)

The plates were mainly produced with a diameter of 30, 25 and 17.5 cm (12″, 10″ and 7″), traditionally called “giant”, “grand” and “minion”, respectively. Other sizes are occasionally found - 12, 15, 23, 28, 33 cm (5″, 6″, 8″, 9″, 11″, 13″). A non-standard diameter of the sound track on a record or sound card can lead to false auto-stop operation of the player.

The rotation speed can be 78, 45, 33⅓ and 16⅔ rpm.

The hole diameter of the record is 7 or 24 mm, the thickness varies from 1.5 to 3 mm, the weight is 120-220 g. Records with a 24 mm hole are intended for players with automatic change of records (jukboxes), as well as a number of household players made abroad. They were often made with a 7mm hole (for conventional turntables) and with arcuate cuts of 24mm in diameter. Using these notches, one could easily break out the central part and get a large hole.

Vinyl records produced in the USSR were marked with an inverted triangle in the case of mono recordings or intersecting circles in the case of stereo.

On modern records intended for DJs, about 12 minutes of music are “cut” on one side - in this case, the distance between the grooves is much larger, the record is more wear-resistant, makes less noise over time, and is not afraid of scratches and careless handling.

Stereo records

Records "on the bones"

Copy of the recording made on x-ray film

Story

The most primitive prototype of a gramophone record can be considered a music box, in which a metal disk with a deep spiral groove is used to pre-record a melody. In certain places of the groove, pinpoint depressions are made - pits, the location of which corresponds to the melody. When the disk rotates, driven by a clock spring mechanism, a special metal needle slides along the groove and “reads” the sequence of applied dots. The needle is attached to a membrane, which makes a sound every time the needle hits a groove.

The oldest gramophone record in the world is now considered to be a sound recording that was made in 1860. Researchers from the recording history group First Sounds discovered it on March 1, 2008, in a Paris archive and were able to play an audio recording of a folk song made by French inventor Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville using a device he called a “phonautograph” in 1860. It is 10 seconds long and is an excerpt from a French folk song. The phonautograph scratched sound tracks onto a piece of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp.

Thomas Edison's phonograph, 1899

In 1892, a method was developed for galvanic replication of a zinc disk from a positive, as well as a technology for pressing ebonite records using a steel printing matrix. But ebonite was quite expensive and was soon replaced by a composite mass based on shellac, a wax-like substance produced by tropical insects from the family of lac bugs that live in southeast Asia. The plates became better and cheaper, and therefore more accessible, but their main drawback was their low mechanical strength - they resembled glass in their fragility. Shellac records were produced until the middle of the 20th century, until they were supplanted by even cheaper ones - made from polyvinyl chloride (“vinyl”).

One of the first real gramophone records was a record released in 1897 by Victor in the USA.

First revolution

The very first records had a diameter of 6.89 inches and were called 7-inch or 175 mm records. This oldest standard dates back to the early 1890s. Such gramophone records are designated 7″, where ″ is the designation of the diameter in inches. At the beginning of their evolution, gramophone records had a high rotation speed and a large track thickness, which significantly reduced the duration of the sound - only 2 minutes on one side. Double-sided gramophone records became available in 1903, thanks to the developments of the Odeon company. In the same year, the first 11.89 or 12 inch (12″) gramophone records with a diameter of 300 mm appeared. Until the early 10s of the 20th century, they mainly released excerpts from the works of musical classics, since they contained only up to five minutes of sound in total.

The third, most popular, was the size of 10 inches (10") or 250 mm; such records contained one and a half times more material than the standard 7 inches. The “life” of such records was short-lived - the pickup weighed more than 100 grams, and steel the needles had to be changed after each side was played. Sometimes, in order to extend the life of favorite works, the same track was recorded on both sides.

In the 30s of the 20th century, records were released one composition on one side, and often one concert of one artist was sold as a set of records of several pieces, often in cardboard, less often in leather, boxes. Due to the external resemblance of such boxes to photo albums, they began to be called record albums or “album with records.”

Second revolution

Single recorded on a 45 rpm record

With the advent of long-playing gramophone records with a rotation speed of 45 and 33 rpm. circulation of gramophones (78 rpm) began to decline, and in the late 60s. their production was completely curtailed (in the USSR in 1970).
Depending on the contents of the record at 45 rpm. the titles Single, Maxi-Single or Extended Play (EP) were used.

Present tense

In certain areas, vinyl long-playing stereophonic records with a diameter of 30 cm, English. LP, are still used today:

• for DJ work and sound experiments;
• fans of this type of sound recording (including audiophiles);
• antique lovers, collectors;
• The Voyager 1 spacecraft carries on board a gramophone record recording the sounds of Earth's civilization, along with a phonograph capsule and a stylus for playing the recording. The choice of this method of sound storage is dictated by its reliability and naturalness. The simplicity of the device makes it reliable. In addition, digital methods of recording and reproducing sound (which were not developed enough in 1977 to fit into the tasks of the Voyager program) use approximations that are dictated by the characteristics of human hearing (for example, the relative inertia of hearing, the inability to hear sounds above 20 kHz) . In hypothetical extraterrestrial beings, hearing may be structured differently. And, besides, the gramophone record is the only sound carrier that can be reproduced without the help of electricity.

Nevertheless, it is too early to give up on the development of the vinyl industry. According to the RIAA, vinyl sales have already passed their low point in 2005 and are showing fairly steady growth.

There are two main markets for gramophone records:

1. Primary
2. Secondary

In the primary market, the main buyers are DJs and audiophiles who prefer music on analogue media. It is the pace of development of this segment that record companies are most interested in; its statistics are presented above.

Currently, expensive collectible records are produced on so-called “heavy” vinyl, such a record is really heavy and weighs 180 grams, such records provide a greater dynamic range. The quality of stamping and the material of such records is higher than that of ordinary vinyl. Although the majority of users purchase music on modern media (whose convenience, portability and durability are much higher), many music lovers and audiophiles still buy vinyl records.

The secondary market is the trade in used vinyl. This segment trades collectibles and private vinyl collections. Currently, the cost of particularly rare records can exceed several thousand dollars.

The first releases (the so-called first press) of records traditionally receive special attention from collectors (for their considered best sound), as well as limited edition records and various collector's editions. The main places of trade are online auctions, as well as local stores of used music goods.

Since now a significant part of trade is carried out via the Internet, and the buyer cannot directly evaluate the quality of the product offered (on which both the sound quality and its price greatly depend), sellers and buyers use a standard system for evaluating vinyl records.

See also

Notes

Literature

• Vasiliev G. A. Recording sound on celluloid discs. (Mass Radio Library, issue 411) - M.-L.: Gosenergoizdat, 1961

Links

• Construction kit for making a mechanical recording gramophone (English)

Buying a vinyl record player in the 21st century can indicate one thing: either you are a connoisseur of antiques, or a true audiophile.

The peak of vinyl's popularity occurred in the middle of the last century. The record has long remained one of the most popular media of music. A beautiful insert album with the image of the artist, a neat transparent bag that protects the surface of the record from scratches, deteriorating needles, the eternal problem - fuses and the indescribable sound of a warm, gentle crackling in the speakers... Few could have predicted that the advent of magnetic tape drives and the digital era of sound recording (read the article:) will never be able to break the listeners’ love for vinyl sound.

Where it all started

The principle of sound recording, which will become the standard for creating vinyl records for many years, was discovered back in 1857 Edward Leon Scott de Martinville. The phonautograph device, patented in France, proposed recording a sound wave on a glass roller covered with soot or paper. The sound itself was captured through a large horn, at the end of which a needle was installed.

Twenty years later, another significant development will appear on the path to improving the sound recording system. While serving at the telegraph office, inventor and scientist Thomas Edison noticed a certain pattern while observing the operation of punched cards. Each contact that touched the holes on the card produced sounds of different pitches. A few months later, in 1877, a description of a device appeared in the US Patent Office, which would become the real progenitor of vinyl record players.

Operating principle Edison's phonograph consisted of playing sound from small tin or wooden rollers covered with foil or a sheet of paper soaked in wax. The production of such rollers required a lot of effort, and the sound carriers themselves were not ready for even minimal deformation and were too sensitive to the storage environment.

The search for a simpler device for recording sound and the development of a medium capable of withstanding transportation and more severe operating conditions prompted the American inventor Emil Berliner refuse to use the method proposed by Martinville and then modified by Edison. In 1897, Berliner became the author of patents for two devices: recorder and gramophone.

For the first time, as a medium on which sound recording was carried out, it was used flat zinc disk. This solution made it possible to significantly reduce the cost of the entire record production cycle. Using a recorder, a “sound image” was applied to the surface of the zinc disk, and the resulting print was already used as a mold for creating copies.

The engineers of that time faced a difficult task - to find material suitable for duplicating sound recordings. Among the main requirements for the composition are low cost and wear resistance.

In search of the perfect material

To make the first gramophone records, a dark brown vulcanized rubber called ebonite. This material vaguely resembles plastic and lends itself well to processing, which was especially noteworthy when creating duplicates. Alas, the material has not stood the test of time due to its tendency to oxidize when exposed to daylight and ebonite is being replaced by organic material - shellac.

For the next thirty years, record production technology remains unchanged. Thick and weighty “shellac” records are gradually taking root in the homes of beginning music lovers. Gramophone, and its successor, published in 1907, mechanical gramophone, become not only regulars at clubs, restaurants and educational institutions, but also confidently enter the life of the average consumer.

In large cities, stores began to appear offering a wide range of “music albums” (all records were presented in a cardboard book box resembling a photo album). Alas, the imperfection of recording technology and the specifics of the material used for production made it possible to store only one composition on one side of the record. Due to the short life of the record and its high level of depreciation during playback, the same song was recorded on both sides.

The one-song barrier was only broken in 1931, when pioneers of sound engineering discovered single-groove stereo recording technology. The stereo record began to hold up to six songs of average length. Nevertheless, the life cycle of a shellac record was only a few months of active use. In the mid-thirties, a new competitor appeared for the record - magnetic tape. Chemical technologists entered the struggle for a potential buyer, and in 1948 the first batch rolled off the assembly line of the Columbia plant. vinyl records.

Since 1950, vinyl records have also been produced in the USSR. Polyvinyl chloride was distinguished by a high level of wear resistance, and the production process itself made it possible to significantly reduce the final thickness of the plate from 3 to 1.5 millimeters. The principle of recording records, established at the end of the last century, turned out to be simple for “folk craftsmen” to master. In the mid-50s and 60s, entire handicraft factories appeared for the underground production of records.

As a material for making the desired disc with “inhumane songs” banned by the authorities, it was used x-ray film. In the private collections of vinyl fans you can find albums by The Beatles and jazz compositions recorded “on bones” - developed X-ray films.

Battle of “formats”

The entire evolution of gramophone records is shrouded in disagreements in the world of standards: sizes, recording principles, manufacturing materials, recording speed.

Size. In the late 1890s, there was a single approved standard - the 7-inch high-speed record. In 1903, a new standard came into use - “giant” with a diameter of 12 inches. A few years later, another option appeared - 10-inch records. In the CIS market, the generally accepted sizes are plates with a diameter of 175, 250 and 300 mm.

Recording technology. Until 1920, the only method of sound recording remained mechanical. The frequency range for such recording was a meager 150 – 4000 Hz. In 1920, the era of electroacoustic recording began, and a microphone was used as a sound pickup. It is this year that the era of gramophone records receives a new “sound breath” with the ability to reproduce BH from 15 to 10,000 Hz.

Limit capacity. Rotation speed. Another characteristic of the entire recording era that experienced constant change was the speed of rotation of the record. The generally accepted “Soviet standard” of 78 rpm allowed for up to 12 minutes of sound. To record a conversation for a long time, “slow records” were used with a rotation speed of 8 and 1/3 revolutions per minute. Another standard is 45 rpm. The final point in the battle of speeds was the release of 33 1/3 rpm long-playing records.

Mono-stereo-quad. The principle of playing gramophone records is based on “reading” with a needle the sound pattern located in multiple grooves (tracks) of the record. Until 1958, mono records were produced: the stylus read only vertical vibrations. Then stereo plates appear: the vertical is responsible for the left channel, and the roughness placed horizontally is for the right. There were also options for quadraphonic sound, but the technology never justified itself.

Vinyl today

Since the advent of Edison's phonograph until today, the principle of recording records has remained virtually unchanged. Using a recorder, sound vibrations are converted into mechanical vibrations that are fed to a cutter, which applies the image of the composition to a copper-plated steel disk. The resulting template is transferred to nickel copies and only then does the pressing of vinyl records begin.

The principle of operation of playback devices - players from a mechanical point of view has also remained virtually unchanged. The same rotating disk, the same pickup needles.

The cost of modern “vinyls” directly depends on several factors:

• design;
• installed preamplifier;
• form factor.

The advent of the compact disc in 1980 seriously undermined the demand for vinyl. For more than 20 years, records disappeared from the attention of music lovers, and bulky players gave way to compact CD players. But history confidently adheres to the boomerang principle: since 2005, there has been an era of vinyl revival. Vinyl has become a subject of experimentation and a sought-after medium among DJs. Warm, smooth sound with virtually no harmonic distortion and incredible detail is not only the sound that a sophisticated music lover or audiophile deserves. This is a sound that everyone should hear and this opportunity does not require a significant financial investment.

What to choose?

A true audiophile is no stranger to the world of vinyl sound. In his mind, the horizon of “sane” record players starts at a price point of several thousand dollars. However, the choice of such expensive equipment is more like a ritual and a kind of tribute to sound, but you can join the world of records with a much smaller amount.

Japanese company Audio-Technica in the audio equipment market can rightfully have the status of a veteran. It was vinyl record players that became a fateful product in the life of the brand. In 1962, Audio-Technica introduced two high-quality pickups (popularly referred to as "stylus") AT-1 And AT-3. The stunning success of the firstborn was supported by the model AT-5, and 7 years after its founding, the Japanese company enters the world market.

Audio-Technica's influence on the world of turntables cannot be overstated. The company was the first to manufacture ultra-pure monocrystalline copper PCOCC pickups; behind her shoulders are the legendary portable vinyl players Mister Disc And Sound Burger, and three years ago the Japanese announced a specialized “turntable” player AT-LP1240 equipped with a DJ module.

One of the most popular “workhorses” that can serve a person just getting acquainted with the world of records can be an entry-level player from the company Audio-Technica AT-LP60 USB.

If your evolution as a music lover began with MP3 and OGG, smoothly transposed into listening to FLAC and ALAC formats, and your old CD player was no longer enjoyable, the Audio-Technica AT-LP60 USB can introduce you to what vinyl sounds like. This player will be an ideal choice for a beginning listener.